Virtual Participations and Virtual Sessions

Regular and invited face-to-face (presential) sessions of MEI 2025 and its collocated conferences will have associated pre- and post-conference Virtual Sessions, where each paper, to be presented at the conference, can be accessed, commented via electronic forums, and evaluated by those participants who have effectively registered in the conference.

Virtual Participations, with no face-to-face (presential) presentations, will be included in the conference program. Authors who will participate virtually in the conference have the option of submitting a slide-show and/or a pre-recorded video of their presentation (asynchronous presentation).
It is optional, it is not mandatory.

Virtual Sessions will include both, papers to be presented at the regular face-to-face sessions and papers submitted and accepted for virtual participation.

Submissions made for virtual (non-presential) participation have the same peer reviewing than those made for non-virtual, presential, face-to-face presentation at the conference venue. Consequently, they will be included in the conference proceedings and, as virtual presentations, in the conference program to be published in the conference website.

Invited sessions may be organized for face-to-face (presential) presentations, for virtual participations or for a hybrid mode of participations. In this later case, there should be at least three face-to-face presentations in order to have an allocated time slot and a meeting room at the conference venue.

More detailed information can be found below with regards to: 1) submissions to be made for Virtual Participation, and 2) Virtual Sessions.

Submissions for Virtual Participation

Thinking of those scholars, researchers and professionals related with the conference topics but unable to attend it personally (usually due to insufficient funding for the traveling costs) a Virtual Participation mode has been established, with the same peer reviewing and validity than face-to-face (presential) ones.

Submissions made for Virtual Participation will go trough the same reviewing processes of the regular papers (double-blind, non-blind, and participative peer reviewing) and, if accepted (according to the same acceptance policy) and it is not an abstract, they will be included in the proceedings and will be eligible for journal publication if they are, according to their reviewers, among the best 25%-30% of those physically and virtually presented at the conference.

Each regular session, included in the conference program, will be associated to a corresponding virtual session where all final versions of the articles to be presented will be displayed and authors can comment them via electronic forums. Registered authors of virtual participations will have access to all conference program sessions via their respective associated virtual sessions. Their article will be displayed as the regular ones.

After paying the respective shipping and handling costs, registered authors of virtual participation, who paid their registration fee, can get delivered the same conference material that the regular attendees receive at the registration desk.

Pre- and Post-Conference Virtual Sessions for the 2025 IIIS' Conferences

Starting in 2010, the Organizing Committees of the IIIS' conferences decided to implement pre- and post-Conference virtual sessions. This decision was based on the experiment, related to this kind of virtual sessions, done in the 2006, 2007 and 2009 IIIS' conferences; on some of the suggestions that 2006 conversational sessions generated, and on the survey made among the participants of these conferences. Each pre- and post-conference virtual session will be associated, in one-to-one relationship, to each face-to-face session of the conference.

Some of the expected benefits that these pre- and post-conference virtual sessions would provide to the conferences' participants are the following:

• To complement the usual face-to-face sessions making them more effective.

• The pre-conference virtual sessions would provide each participant with the following opportunities:
  • To have access to the papers to be presented at his/her session, ahead before the conference so, she, or he, can have a timely reflection on the content of the paper.
  • To comment the content of the papers, so the author of the commented paper may improve his/her presentation at the conference.
  • To review and to evaluate the papers.
  • To have electronic communications with other authors regarding their papers. It is expected that these previous interaction will improve the papers presentation at the conference, and the audience would assimilate better the presentation of the papers allowing them to make better questions. So, better presentations, better questions, better answers and better knowledge communication would be achieved at the formal face-to-face presentations. This possible improvement was noticed in the experiment done in the 2006 conferences, suggested by some 2006 conferences' conversational session on this issue and by the electronic survey made on this issue among the participants of 2006 IIIS' conferences.

• The post-conference virtual sessions would provide:
  • A follow up to the face-to-face sessions.
  • The opportunity to make informed comments on the papers, so the respective authors might gain the improvement of the content of these papers for future and more formal publications (journal's publications, for example) of the ideas and solutions presented at the conference.
  • The opportunity to evaluate the papers presented at the respective face-to-face sessions and to contribute with the selection process of the best papers to be published in the Journal of Systemics, Cybernetics and Informatics (JSCI).
  • An increasing probability of future collaborative research.

The implementation of the pre- and post conference virtual sessions for the 2025 IIIS' conference will be done in a similar way. But, continuous interviewing to the users of this implementation might change the means by which these virtual sessions are being implemented.